I haven't read Nickel and Dimed yet and I shop at Wal-Mart, so I mention Barbara Ehrenreich with some reluctance. (I hate feeling guilty.) Anyway, her latest piece for The Progressive is a hoot. Having spent a couple years in North Carolina, and having experienced the economic disparities and the strange Southern conservatism there, I wasn't particularly surprised by anything she's written. But I like her attitude.
After UNC Chapel Hill adopted Nickel and Dimed for their incoming freshman, a group calling themselves The Committee for a Better Carolina launched an attack on the university's "liberal bias." Talk radio and local politicians got wind of it, and, of course, all hell broke loose. Ehrenreich was soon branded a "Marxist, a socialist, an atheist, and a dedicated enemy of the American family." A certain sect was particularly upset by her description of Jesus as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist." Ehrenreich's response:
As for Jesus being a socialist, I take it back. He was actually a little to the left of that, judging from his instruction to the rich man to sell all that he had and give to the poor. If that's what it takes to be a true Christian, believe me, it's a hell of a lot easier to be a socialist: You have to dedicate yourself to working for the poor, just as a Christian should, but at least you get to keep your stuff. The topic of Christian altruism v. socialist pragmatism could, I thought, entertain the rightwing radio talk show audiences for weeks.
But I was being distracted and diverted. The real issue, I've decided, isn't just the campus and its workers, but the state. According to the North Carolina Justice and Economic Development Center, 60 percent of North Carolina families with children do not earn enough to meet basic, bare-bone, needs. Nationwide, when last measured in 2000, 29 percent of families were in the same straits, giving North Carolina twice the level of economic misery as the country as a whole. . . .
It's not a pretty picture: Well-fed suits engaging in chest-thumping attacks on an exposé about poverty while at least some of their constituents are basing their meal plans around soda crackers. I don't know much about pornography — and am eager to hear from any reader who has detected it in Nickel and Dimed — but I do know obscenity when I see it.
So much sound and fury. I think it's time for me to get out of the south.
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